“Obama puts people in positions that mirror him. Eric Holder, you name it, they’re doing Obama’s bidding. Everybody. Susan Rice and Samantha Power, they are Obama, and there’s a context for what’s happening. Herbert Meyer, if I may quote him again, asserted that essentially what’s taking place in the United States right now is a coup, not a violent coup, and not a million artistic coup, but nevertheless a takeover of a government, and it’s being done by the Obama administration.” Rush Limbaugh

“We wanted to give you as much of a heads up as possible, but we are calling for as many people to come to DC as possible on Wednesday, June 19, 2013, at 12pm noon for an Audit the IRS Rally. We apologize for the short notice, but we were just finally able to secure the permit today. This is important. With all of mess and scandals that are going on in DC, we need to have a big presence to tell them that we aren’t going to take it. We are focusing on the IRS because it is the issue that can cross both lines. No one likes the government abusing its power, and that’s the message we want to convey.

“All of the other scandals and issues are important right now as well, but the focus for this rally will be the IRS to try to reach the broadest audience that we can and gain as much support as we can.

“Please start spreading the word to your groups. We will have more information tomorrow for the general public, but we wanted to let you know what’s going on with as much notice as possible.

Madeleine Morgenstern, The Blaze: “Revolt Among Republicans on Immigration Bill: 70 House Members Risk Careers in Planned Showdown With Leadership”

“The 70 members are petitioning for a special Republican conference meeting on the bill, a “highly unusual” move to go head-to-head with the speaker, according to Reps. Michele Bachmann (Minn.), Steve King (Iowa) and Louie Gohmert (Texas), who are serving as spokespersons for the group.

“Bachmann, King and Gohmert told TheBlaze the group is invoking the Hastert Rule: requiring support from a majority of the majority to bring a bill forward.

“The petition is expected to go to the House leadership on Friday, but it’s possible some signatories might remove their names due to political risk, or that Boehner could head off the challenge by striking a deal. Going against leadership in such a way could have harsh political consequences for the signatories, including retaliation such as permanently getting passed over for chairmanship positions.

PAULA STILES: ACTION ALERT

“The PA Senate just approved a 2.5 billion dollar transportation bill. The money is to go to infrastructure. The following fees will be going up unless we stop this in the house.

Cost of driver’s license will go from 29.50 every four years to 50.50 every six years. A basic vehicle registration will increase from 36.00 annually to 102.00 every two years.

Moving violation will automatically have a 100.00 surcharge on them. Anyone failing to obey traffic-controlled mechanisms, will be fined from 100.00 – 300.00. Currently 25.00.

Gas tax will go up.

You should question the infrastructure and where our money is going now in PA? What is included in infrastructure (Mass transit)? Is this going to force people who are struggling now to move from cars to public transportation (Agenda 21). Governor Corbett is the poster child for Agenda 21. By the way, Governor O’Malley in MD (who is very progressive), signed the same proposal into law.

Contact your State Reps immediately and demand that they say no to these taxes. Attached is the article for your review.

June 17th

1579: Sir Francis Drake anchored in San Francisco Bay and claimed the area for Queen Elizabeth I.

1775: Patriot and British troops fought the Battle of Bunker Hill near Boston.

1885: The Statue of Liberty arrived in New York City in sections aboard a French ship.

1972: Five men were arrested for breaking into the Democratic national headquarters in Washington’s Watergate complex, setting off the Watergate scandal.

James Taranto, WSJ: “Pathological Altruism”

Another take on “white guilt”. . .

“A simple concept that could revolutionize scientific and social thought.

“We don’t think we’d ever heard of Oakland University, a second-tier institution in suburban Rochester, Mich., but Barbara Oakley, an associate professor in engineering, may help put the place on the map. Earlier this week Oakland’s Oakley published a fascinating paper, “Concepts and Implications of Altruism Bias and Pathological Altruism,” in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“The PNAS paper has the virtue of brevity, running only eight pages despite including 110 footnotes. Yet it’s remarkable for its breadth and depth. It introduces a simple yet versatile idea that could revolutionize scientific and social thought.

“Oakley defines pathological altruism as “altruism in which attempts to promote the welfare of others instead result in unanticipated harm.”

“. . . “Empathy,” Oakley notes, “is not a uniformly positive attribute. It is associated with emotional contagion; hindsight bias; motivated reasoning; caring only for those we like or who comprise our in-group (parochial altruism); jumping to conclusions; and inappropriate feelings of guilt in noncooperators who refuse to follow orders to hurt others.” It also can produce bad public policy. . . “

“. . . As we’ve argued, college degrees became increasingly necessary for entry-level professional jobs as the result of a well-intentioned Supreme Court decision that restricted employers from using IQ tests because of their “disparate impact” on minorities.

“Universities altruistically established admissions standards that discriminated in favor of minorities, a policy that proved pathological because underqualified minority students struggled to succeed and even qualified ones face the stigma of being assumed to be ‘affirmative action’ beneficiaries. The institutions tried to help by setting up separate orientations, which of course only reinforced their separation from the broader student body.

“Before President Obama took office, I warned that Democrats planned to steer untold amounts of taxpayer dollars to his shady community-organizing pals. The Dems’ 2008 party platform proposed the creation of a “Social Investment Fund Network” to subsidize “social entrepreneurs and leading nonprofit organizations [that] are assisting schools, lifting families out of poverty, filling health-care gaps, and inspiring others to lead change in their own communities.”

“Investigative journalist James O’Keefe’s pioneering work helped bring down the fraudsters of ACORN. But a thousand other ACORN-style knockoffs have metastasized in the shadows. Not long after Obama took office, big-government Democrats and Republicans handed him the $6 billion mandatory “volunteerism” package known as the “SERVE America Act.” The boondoggle fueled legions of new government “volunteers,” including a Clean Energy Corps, an Education Corps, a Healthy Futures Corps, a Veterans Service Corps, and an expanded National Civilian Community Corps for disaster relief and energy conservation. . .”

“Suggestions to encourage greater incarceration of the mentally unstable, to jawbone Hollywood about its profitable (and gratuitous) gun violence, to regulate extremely violent — and extremely well-selling — video games usually fall on deaf liberal ears. In short, the stereotyped camouflaged, weekend gun enthusiast is not the problem that leads to Columbine, or the nearly 532 murders last year in Chicago. But because we can’t or won’t address the causes of the latter, we go after the former. He is not the unhinged sort that shoots a Gabby Giffords or innocents in an Aurora, Colorado, theater; but somehow is the supposed red-neck yokel that a journalist like ABC’s Brian Ross assumes does.

“If the Department of Homeland Security, as is rumored, really did wish to stockpile hundreds of millions of rounds of ammunition, then why did it begin such repository buying right in the middle of a hysterical national debate about limiting access to various rifles and semi-automatic weapons? Was it not to create a climate of fear and panic buying that has emptied America’s shelves of the most popular types of ammunition? If the homicide rate in Philadelphia and Chicago is any indication, murderers still have plenty of access to bullets. Those who want to target practice or shoot a varmint on their property do not.

“The CIA and FBI knew of the suspicious activity of the Boston bombers, of Major Hasan, and of Anwar al-Awlaki. And they did nothing to preempt their violence. . .”

Molly Hooper, The Hill: “GOP to Obama: Work with Congress on student loan interest rate fix”

Congressmen buy votes, thus, we have had “bubbles” for mortgages, autos, health care, birth control, food stamps, and lawyers. In this case, no one will admit their kid is one of the 80 percent who are not prepared , by study or ability, for college work. And low-information voters prefer to deal with a legislator than get information that leads to avoidance of most university costs.

“‘Between now and the end of the month, Senate Republicans will work hard with the president and with the House to produce an agreement that ensures all student borrowers benefit from today’s low interest rates. That would mean that 100 percent of all new student loans made this year would have a rate below five percent,’ Alexander said in the weekly GOP national address.”

“Thirty-two-year old family physician Doug Nunamaker of Wichita, Kan., said after five years of dealing with the red tape of health insurance companies and the high overhead for the staff he hired just to deal with paperwork, he switched to a system of charging his patients a monthly fee plus the price of an office visit or test, CNN/Money reported.
“For example, under Nunamaker’s membership plan — also known as ‘concierge’ medicine or ‘direct primary care’ practices — each patient pays a flat monthly fee to have unlimited access to the doctors and any medical service they can provide in the practice, such as stitches or an EKG.
“For adults up to age 44, Nunamaker charges $50 a month, pediatric services are $10 a month, and for adults age 44 and older it costs $100 a month. Although Nunamaker calls the practice ‘cash-only,’ he accepts credit and debit cards for the fees and services.
“Nunamaker and his partner negotiated deals for services outside the office. A cholesterol test costs the patient for $3, versus the $90 or more billed to insurance companies; an MRI can cost $400, compared with $2,000 or more billed to insurance companies. . . “

“The United Nations has long been a cesspool of hostility towards the United States, Israel, and freedom more generally. It is dominated by those who promote and protect our enemies’ interests, while undermining ours. Worse yet, we pay much of the UN’s budget.

Past presidents have responded to this travesty by sending ambassadors to the UN who unapologetically challenged that agenda. In particular, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and John Bolton were proud of our country and tirelessly championed its values.

It is, therefore, a particularly repugnant irony that President Obama wants to entrust Dr. Kirkpatrick’s former post to Samantha Power, a woman who epitomizes the left-wing partisans President Reagan’s ambassador famously characterized as the “Blame America First crowd.”

The contrast between Mr. Obama’s choice and these three former U.S. representatives could hardly be more stark. . . “

NSA . . .

“When a National Security Agency contractor revealed top-secret details this month on the government’s collection of Americans’ phone and Internet records, one select group of intelligence veterans breathed a sigh of relief.

“Thomas Drake, William Binney and J. Kirk Wiebe belong to a select fraternity: the NSA officials who paved the way.

“For years, the three whistle-blowers had told anyone who would listen that the NSA collects huge swaths of communications data from U.S. citizens. They had spent decades in the top ranks of the agency, designing and managing the very data-collection systems they say have been turned against Americans. When they became convinced that fundamental constitutional rights were being violated, they complained first to their superiors, then to federal investigators, congressional oversight committees and, finally, to the news media.

“To the intelligence community, the trio are villains who compromised what the government classifies as some of its most secret, crucial and successful initiatives. They have been investigated as criminals and forced to give up careers, reputations and friendships built over a lifetime.

Tim Cavanaugh, Daily Caller: “What do They know about you? An interview with NSA analyst William Binney”

“William Binney worked as a National Security Agency analyst for nearly 30 years, eventually becoming the technical director of the of the world geopolitical and military analysis and reporting group. After retiring from the NSA in 2001, Binney became an increasingly vocal critic of the intelligence community, raising alarms about mission creep, wasteful projects and surveillance of law-abiding Americans. Although he still collects a pension from his old employer, the NSA has yanked his security clearance and his home was raided in 2007 as part of a leak investigation in which he was eventually cleared. Binney spoke with The Daily Caller about the latest NSA revelations from his home in Maryland.http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/10/what-do-they-know-about-you-an-interview-with-nsa-analyst-william-binney/

Rush Limbaugh: Coup?

“. . . There’s always gonna be an America. I don’t want to be misunderstood. I must always clarify. I think, like I said Friday, we are in the midst of a coup taking place. This government, this nation, is being — what terminology would not affect you? Taken over? Is that too dicey? Does that make you too nervous? Transformed? Regardless, there is a peaceful coup d’etat going on. Most people, when you tell ‘em there’s a coup going on, you think of rebels in tinhorn dictatorships riding around in 25-year-old Jeeps firing machine guns at the rebels, and at the citizens on the dusty road. That’s not what’s happening here. That’s not the kind of coup that’s taking place here.

“The kind of coup that’s taking place here is nationalizing one-sixth of the economy, the health care system, under control of government. They’ve taken it over. They are attempting to totally bastardize the immigration system in this country, take that over and destroy it. If you look at the IRS scandal, this is what happens in tinhorn banana republics: enemies of the regime are targeted, punished, votes suppressed, not allowed to raise money, basically not allowed to be in opposition. We’re in the middle of a coup. And the question is not whether Obama survives it, folks, it’s whether the country does. Sorry. I wish the UK Telegraph’s take on this was right, but it isn’t. Normally it would be.

But we have a unique set of circumstances here that accompany Barack Obama in the Oval Office, and those circumstances are like an impenetrable fortress around him. And he is fully aware and exploits it. . . “

Rush Limbaugh: Swarming

The research findings are coherent: Birds of a feather – on bowling teams or in marriages – do flock together. Read: Strogatz, Steven. (2003) Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order. NY: Hyperion.

“. . . People are looking for a smoking gun memo from Obama instructing the IRS. There isn’t one. And there isn’t one because it’s not needed. Obama put people there who he knew would do what he would do if he were there. Everybody is Obama in this administration. Some people say, “My gosh, how could some of these wackos have gotten past Obama’s vetting?” They didn’t get past him. It’s exactly who he wants there. He wants people there who he doesn’t have to send a written memo to. He doesn’t want to have to have instructions written down or an owner’s manual.

“And these people, they’re not hard to find. They’re all over academia. Not hard to find people that want to crucify the Tea Party. Not hard to find people that want to make sure Obama’s opponents don’t raise money. You don’t have to work very hard to find people in this country who would love to help Barack Obama make sure that conservative Republicans’ votes don’t count or don’t even take place. You don’t have to look long and hard to find people like that. . .”

Damian Thompson, UK Telegraph: “Edward Snowden has blown the whistle on this presidency. You have to wonder: Will Obama see out his full term?”

“. . . I do not see how Obama can talk his way out of this one. Snowden is not Bradley Manning: he’s not a disturbed disco bunny but a highly articulate network security specialist who has left behind a $200,000 salary and girlfriend in Hawaii for a life on the run. He’s not a sleazy opportunist like Julian Assange, either. As he says: “I’m willing to sacrifice all of that because I can’t in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building.”

“It will be very difficult for the Obama administration to portray Snowden as a traitor. For a start, I don’t think US public opinion will allow it. Any explanations it offers will be drowned out by American citizens demanding to know: “So how much do you know about me and my family? How can I find out? How long have you been collecting this stuff? What are you going to do with it?”

“. . . There are 300 million stories in the Naked Republic, and the NSA hears all of them, 24/7. Even in the wake of a four-figure death toll, with the burial pit still smoking, the formal, visible state could not be honest about the very particular threat it faced, and so in the shadows the unseen state grew remorselessly, the blades of the harvester whirring endlessly but, don’t worry, only for ‘metadata.’ As I wrote in National Review in November 2001, ‘The bigger you make the government, the more you entrust to it, the more powers you give it to nose around the citizenry’s bank accounts, and phone calls, and e-mails, and favorite Internet porn sites, the more you’ll enfeeble it with the siren song of the soft target. The Mounties will no longer get their man, they’ll get you instead. Frankly, it’s a lot easier.’ As the IRS scandal reminds us, you have to have a touchingly naïve view of government to believe that the 99.9999 percent of ‘metadata’ entirely irrelevant to terrorism will not be put to some use, sooner or later. . . “

“. . . The Senate held its last vote of the week a little after noon on Thursday, and many lawmakers were eager to take advantage of the short day and head back to their home states for Father’s Day weekend.
“Only 47 of 100 senators attended the 2:30 briefing, leaving dozens of chairs in the secure meeting room empty as Clapper, Alexander and other senior officials told lawmakers about classified programs to monitor millions of telephone calls and broad swaths of Internet activity. The room on the lower level of the Capitol Visitor Center is large enough to fit the entire Senate membership, according to a Senate aide.

“The Hill was not provided the names of who did, and who didn’t, attend the briefing. . . “

BENGHAZI . . .

“In a bombshell admission that has until now gone unreported, Martin Dempsey, chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, conceded that highly trained Special Forces were stationed just a few hours away from Benghazi on the night of the attacks but were not told to deploy to Libya. In comments that may warrant further investigation, Dempsey stated at a Senate hearing Wednesday that on the night of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack, command of the Special Forces – known as C-110, or the EUCOM CIF – was transferred from the military’s European command to AFRICOM, or the United States Africa Command. Dempsey did not state any reason for the strange transfer of command nor could he provide a timeline for the transfer the night of the attack . . .”

SYRIA . . .

“. . . Last month, the Economist had an illuminating report on the Syrian opposition groups, which concluded that, “As the civil war has dragged on, the rebels, hardened by war and seeing where their bread is buttered, have become more Islamist and extreme.” An accompanying helpful chart breaks down the three main fronts of the opposition (which represent alliances of various rebel fighting groups) and then further breaks down the nine key rebel fighting groups. According to the chart, two of the three main fronts are Islamist, as are seven of the nine key rebel fighting groups.

“A diplomatic breakthrough on the Syrian civil war at the G8 summit in Northern Ireland appeared unlikely when the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, chastised the west for considering arming Syrian rebels, saying they ate human organs. He said Russia by contrast was arming the legitimate government of Syria.

Speaking after a difficult meeting with Putin in Downing Street, David Cameron claimed both men were in agreement on the need to end the human catastrophe of the civil war. But there was little to suggest the two men made progress on how to convene a fresh Syrian peace conference in Geneva, let alone who should attend, or its agenda.

In icy exchanges at a press conference, Putin said: “You will not deny that one does not really need to support the people who not only kill their enemies, but open up their bodies, eat their intestines in front of the public and cameras. Are these the people you want to support? Is it them who you want to supply with weapons? Then this probably has little relation to humanitarian values that have been preached in Europe for hundreds of years.”

Putin’s remarks will find an echo on the Conservative benches, where there is strong resistance to arming the Syrian opposition . . .”

IMMIGRATION . . .

“The divide over immigration reform is not primarily a Left/Right or Democratic/Republican divide; instead, it cuts, and sharply so, across class lines. Elites blur the distinction between legal and illegal immigration to ensure that the opponents of the latter appear to be against the former. They talk grandly of making legal immigration meritocratic, but fall silent when asked to what degree. They talk darkly of racist subtexts in the arguments of their opponents, but skip over the overt ethnic chauvinism of proponents of amnesty; they decry conservative paranoia over a new demography, but never liberal euphoria over just such a planned reset. They talk deprecatingly of rubes who do not understand the new global realties, but never of their own parochialism ensconced in New York or Washington or San Francisco. They talk of reactionaries who do not fathom the ins and outs of the debate; never of their own willful ignorance of the realities on the ground in East L.A. or southwest Fresno.

Ann Coulter: “IF THE GOP IS THIS STUPID, IT DESERVES TO DIE”

“Democrats terrify Hispanics into thinking they’ll be lynched if they vote for Republicans, and then turn around and taunt Republicans for not winning a majority of the Hispanic vote.
“This line of attack has real resonance with our stupidest Republicans. (Proposed Republican primary targets: Sens. Kelly Ayotte, Jeff Flake, Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio.) Which explains why Republicans are devoting all their energy to slightly increasing their share of the Hispanic vote while alienating everyone else in America.
“It must be fun for liberals to manipulate Republicans into focusing on hopeless causes. Why don’t Democrats waste their time trying to win the votes of gun owners?
“As journalist Steve Sailer recently pointed out, the Hispanic vote terrifying Republicans isn’t that big. It actually declined in 2012. The Census Bureau finally released the real voter turnout numbers from the last election, and the Hispanic vote came in at only 8.4 percent of the electorate — not the 10 percent claimed by the pro-amnesty crowd.
“The sleeping giant of the last election wasn’t Hispanics; it was elderly black women, terrified of media claims that Republicans were trying to suppress the black vote and determined to keep the first African-American president in the White House. . .”

PA . . .

“HARRISBURG — After years of seeing Pennsylvania property taxes creep up, some lawmakers are saying enough is enough.

Before casting a “no” vote on this year’s state budget, Rep. Mark Painter, D-Montgomery, explained why he opposed the plan.

Reading from a prepared speech on the House floor, Painter said he thinks the GOP-backed proposal is bound to lead to higher property taxes in his southeastern district.

Painter recalled, during his days as a township tax collector, seeing home owners cry in his office, fearful of losing their homes due to rising property taxes.

“They cried because they didn’t know how they were going to be able to pay their school taxes, they didn’t know how they were going to be able to keep their homes,” he said. “The claim that this budget doesn’t raise taxes will ring hollow in Limerick Township.”

“Like Pennsylvania, Republicans have a majority in the Legislature and a Republican Governor and yet…these Republicans enact the highest tax increase in Virginia history raising taxes on almost everything. As we know, the Senate voted to increase spending on Transportation by $2.5 billion funded by a higher gas tax and higher and higher fees including a $100 additional speeding fine.

“The Virginia Tea Party rallied and crushed two committee chairs in a primary election. Our primaries are about 10 months away. It is time to recruit candidates to challenge the Big Spending Tax and Fee Hiking Union Republicans.

“Speaker Sam Smith is vulnerable and so is US Rep Bill Shuster! Let us see if we can find some more candidates.. . . “

The Senate concurred with House amendments to Senate Bill 334 , which would create a new Traffic Division in the Philadelphia Municipal Court to handle the responsibilities of Philadelphia Traffic Court. Similar legislation, Senate Bill 333 , a constitutional amendment to eliminate the Traffic Court, passed the House and Senate earlier this year. SB 334 is now with the Governor for further consideration and action.

Also with the Governor is House Bill 40 , which provides uniform regulations for accountants and Senate Bill 196 , PENNVEST funding for storm water management projects.

Bill Signed into LawThe Governor signed House Bill 1029 into law as Act 12 of 2013. The legislation increases river pilot service fees on the Delaware River and Bay beginning in 2014.

May Revenue Collections IncreaseLast month Pennsylvania collected $2 billion in General Fund revenue, which was $35.1 million, or 1.8 percent, more than anticipated. Fiscal year-to-date General Fund collections total $26 billion, which is $102.3 million, or 0.4 percent, above estimate.

The Senate will be in session June 17, 18, 19 and 20. Senate session can be viewed live on my website.

The Senate concurred with House amendments to Senate Bill 334 , which would create a new Traffic Division in the Philadelphia Municipal Court to handle the responsibilities of Philadelphia Traffic Court. Similar legislation, Senate Bill 333 , a constitutional amendment to eliminate the Traffic Court, passed the House and Senate earlier this year. SB 334 is now with the Governor for further consideration and action.

Also with the Governor is House Bill 40 , which provides uniform regulations for accountants and Senate Bill 196 , PENNVEST funding for storm water management projects.

Bill Signed into LawThe Governor signed House Bill 1029 into law as Act 12 of 2013. The legislation increases river pilot service fees on the Delaware River and Bay beginning in 2014.

Committee News
The Senate Education Committee unanimously reported out three bills, which now go to the full Senate. Senate Bill 31 strengthens child abuse reporting requirements in schools; Senate Bill 78 provides for financial aid for online learning; and Senate Bill 606 provides for an automatic external defibrillator (AED) program in schools.

May Revenue Collections Increase
Last month Pennsylvania collected $2 billion in General Fund revenue, which was $35.1 million, or 1.8 percent, more than anticipated. Fiscal year-to-date General Fund collections total $26 billion, which is $102.3 million, or 0.4 percent, above estimate.

END NOTES . . .

From CATS, 7/26/12

“Thoughts about Watch Birds …

“Popular superstition is that assigning one of Hatlo’s Watch Birds means perps and bumpkins will behave better. Not always true, however, for government officials. Charles Rangel is a known tax cheat, Billy Clinton played with his female students, Fast Eddie Rendell became governor, and Wilson Good was reelected after he burned a neighborhood. Irony – Ron Paul’s accomplishment could yield only more government … and we will all watch Mr. & Mrs. Bamster steal files between November and January”

And Senator Rubio claims that we gotta count the illegals before we lock more of them out. Is he delusional or infected by Chuckie ”Cheese” Schumer?

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CATS is a conservative publication, almost free of advertising, and has appeared at least three times per week for the last six years. It consists of abstracts from the wider press, links to original sources, and sometimes, remarks by Jim Brody.